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Over at StatNews is a story on a recent trend where low cost commercial DNA testing is resulting in a number of White Nationalists taking genetic tests, and sometimes they don't like the results that come back.
The article looks at research on how they respond to the sometimes unexpected results:
[...] In a new study, sociologists Aaron Panofsky and Joan Donovan examined years' worth of posts on Stormfront to see how members dealt with the news.
[...] About a third of the people posting their results were pleased with what they found. "Pretty damn pure blood," said a user with the username Sloth. But the majority didn't find themselves in that situation. Instead, the community often helped them reject the test, or argue with its results.
Some rejected the tests entirely, saying that an individual's knowledge about his or her own genealogy is better than whatever a genetic test can reveal. [...] Others, he said, responded to unwanted genetic results by saying that those kinds of tests don't matter if you are truly committed to being a white nationalist. Yet others tried to discredit the genetic tests as a Jewish conspiracy "that is trying to confuse true white Americans about their ancestry," Panofsky said.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @07:59PM (9 children)
That makes no sense, why would the US help the Russians take over part of Ukraine? Got any sources, copies of said images etc.?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by curunir_wolf on Friday August 18 2017, @08:21PM (8 children)
You'll need to brush up a bit on Russian / Ukraine history, they weren't helping the Russians, who never "took over" any part of Ukraine. Without going into speculation about US or CIA involvement, the 2014 revolution was a coup to oust the Russia-friendly Ukrainian government. The Wikipedia has some decent coverage of it [wikipedia.org].
Here's some coverage from Salon [salon.com]
talking about McCain's ties with the Svoboda party.
I didn't find a lot of pictures, but there's one on this page [wordpress.com]. The flag is red and black - "blood and soil", get it?
I am a crackpot
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 18 2017, @08:33PM (5 children)
Russians, who never "took over" any part of Ukraine
They annexed Crimea! [wikipedia.org] WTF are you talking about?!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday August 19 2017, @01:03AM (2 children)
Crimea's population is 65% Russians [wikipedia.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19 2017, @05:45AM (1 child)
Australia's population is 33.5% Australians. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday August 19 2017, @11:52PM
It's still the highest percentage on that list.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Disagree) by DeathMonkey on Saturday August 19 2017, @07:19AM
Ok, "Disagree" with a Wikipedia summary with Four hundred and nine citations! [wikipedia.org]
Not that additional citations will work; but, here's Fox News in case you think it's some kind of liberal conspiracy:
Gatherings mark anniversary of Russia's annexation of Crimea [foxnews.com]
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Sunday August 20 2017, @12:48PM
You're paying too much attention to the lying CNN and western, NATO-supporting media. There was no “land grab” involved in Crimea. At least not since 1783 when Catherine II ousted the Turks and declared Crimea to be part of Russia: Crimea has been the base of the Black Sea Fleet ever since. It is also a major centre of Russian shipping because of its deep warm water ports. There were no major troop movements to Crimea in 2014, because they were already there. The major troop movements were all concentrated on the Ukrainian border further north in anticipation of an invasion of east Ukraine, which was in the end deemed to be unnecessary.
There are two reasons there was such a heavy military presence in Crimea for most of the communist era. Firstly those ports command the Black Sea and Russia has no other warm water ports other than thousands miles away on the Pacific. Those ports had to be protected at all costs and that is why many of the largest battles in Russian history have been fought in Crimea. Secondly, the people of Crimea tended to be fiercely Tsarist. They supported the monarchy. Crimea became a stronghold for White Russian forces and anti-communist activity during the civil war, but they very much considered themselves to be Russian patriots. The communists never quite trusted Crimeans.
In 1954, Nikita Khrushchev agreed to allow a power sharing arrangement between Russia and Ukraine over Crimea, to allow Ukraine access to those same ports. This was an easy concession for him to make given that the government in Kiev was in his pocket anyway and given a large permanent Russian military presence in Crimea, and further given that the majority of Crimeans are Russian with no loyalty to Ukraine. But in the giant game of chess that constituted the inner workings of the party, Khrushchev had reason to want Ukraine to have some influence in the Crimea region. Khrushchev had risen to power within the party of the Ukrainian SSR. He was a long standing leader of the Ukrainian communist party. Ukraine was his power base politically.
But crimea was never part of Ukraine. Crimea has been Russia since before Ukraine even existed. The state now known as Ukraine was cobbled together by the Bolsheviks in the early 1920s using a mish-mash of old Hapsburg and Polish territories and throwing in some Russian ones too. That is why the majority of the population of Ukraine east of the Dnieper are Russian. The Dnieper used to mark the boundary between Russia and Poland and Austria / Hungary. The communists deliberately included Russian territories into Ukraine because they sought to “russify” it.
You cannot “annex” part of your own country. Just for perspective; Crimea has been part of Russia longer than California or Oklahoma or Ohio have been part of the United States.
In 2014, Ukrainian forces were ejected from Crimea for obvious reasons. Ukraine was courting NATO with plenty of encouragement from the United States. There was no way that Russia was going to tolerate NATO in Ukraine and I was surprised that Putin did not take the whole of East Ukraine back. Russia pulled its troops out of Ukraine in the early 1990s without a shot being fired. There were two strings attached. First that Ukraine returned all nuclear weapons which it did. Second that Ukraine sign an undertaking not to join any military alliance and not to allow foreign troops on its soil, which it did. This treaty was torn up by Ukraine, not Russia.
So Putin did his duty as Russian president. He protected Russia’s security from a clear threat by a hostile force. He did so quickly, reluctantly and as peacefully as possible and his ratings went through the roof in Russia for the way he handled it.
The referendum in Crimea about cutting ties with Ukraine permanently, was an easy one for Putin. The Crimeans already considered themselves Russian. They had never had a problem with Ukraine in the past, but now there were scary right-wing militias patrolling the streets of Kiev, ethnic Russians being bullied and beaten and burned out of their homes; and they didn’t want it spreading. Politicians don’t hold referenda unless they know they are going to win. There was no way Putin was going to lose that one and he knew it. It is funny though how all the high-minded talk about respect for democracy suddenly goes quite in the US media when people have the audacity to vote in a way that inconveniences America.
Putin was keeping a massive hostile and increasingly aggressive military alliance away from one of the most important regions of Russia. It is also to ignore NATO provocation in Europe and to ignore Russian history. They do not sit comfortably with foreign military alliances building up on their borders, for obvious reasons. NATO is openly anti Russian and it has been baiting Russia relentlessly for decades. Russia gave up Eastern Europe peacefully but only on agreements that NATO would not be allowed in.
The same thing happened with Georgia. Saakashvili also bought the NATO snake-oil. He was dumb enough to think that if he sent some troops to support the Americans in Iraq then NATO would support him against Russia. NATO did what it always does. It gave him weapons and encouraged him to go ahead and have a go at Russia; it gave him vague promises of support and then abandoned him as Russian tanks came rolling over the border. Russia had absolutely no interest in Georgia until Saakashvili succeeded in getting NATO to accept Georgia as a NATO “Member in Waiting” at the Bucharest Summit in 2008.
That was when Russia became interested in Georgia again; for one reason and one reason only — NATO aggression. The War in Georgia was not about Ossetia or Abkhazia. They were just the excuse. It was about NATO. And once again Russia did what it had to do and left. The people of Georgia overwhelmingly rejected that pompous blundering clown Saakashvili, the first chance they got in 2012. He left Georgia permanently shortly after words because nobody could stand him.
NATO of course must have known that Georgia had no chance in a war against Russia; but it helped Saakashvili to provoke that war anyway, so it could make a martyr out of Georgia and once again begin shrieking about “Russian aggression.” It tried to do the same thing in Ukraine.
Russia created a large buffer zone between Russian and NATO forces in the early 1990s. Unfortunately NATO simply swarmed in and filled it. And they trampled all over that good will and optimism that Gorbachev had created across Europe.
People in the former USSR block were pleased when Russian forces began to pull out of Poland and the Baltics and other Eastern European countries. They hoped that Russia could start to mend fences with their westerly neighbours; that Russia would no longer be considered the bully boy of Europe. But as treaties were torn up one by one and as NATO began pouring in, building their missile bases and military installations along the Russian border, and pointing their guns at Moscow, they began to think Gorbachev had been wrong. They should have kept a hold on Poland.
Since the end of World War Two, Russia has sent troops into Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Georgia. It was wrong on Czechoslovakia, wrong on Hungary, wrong on Afghanistan and absolutely right on Georgia. Chechnya is still very much a grey area. But all of Russia’s military interventions have been fought in countries on Russia’s borders, and all of them motivated, whether misguidedly or not, by securing those borders.
The United States in the same period has attacked too many countries to mention, all over the world; countries that had never had any power to threaten the United States in any conceivable way. The United States has attacked more sovereign nations than Hitler and Napoleon put to together. Last count the United States had major military bases in sixty countries along with over 160 smaller military installations. Russia has two bases that are not in Russia.
Imagine the people of the USA wake up one day to find that Russian forces are installing missile bases and air bases along the south bank of the Rio Grande; that Russian delegations are also in Ottawa drawing up proposals for an anti-American Russo-Canadian alliance, with a views to installing Russian military bases north of Vermont or Montana; and that Russian forces are also building Naval bases in the Caribbean and that the are holding massive military war games, in conjunction with Mexican, Canadian and Chinese forces right off the coast of California. And of course Moscow is announcing to Russian people that this is being done to contain American aggression!
That is precisely the level of relentless harassment and provocation that Russia has been dealing with from NATO for decades now.
But until those Russian military bases go it a few miles from the Texas border, then it is monumental hypocrisy for the USA or any of its NATO lackeys to accuse Russia of aggression.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 18 2017, @08:37PM (1 child)
Here's some coverage from Salon [salon.com]
From that article:
Many surviving OUN-B members fled to Western Europe and the United States – occasionally with CIA help – where they quietly forged political alliances with right-wing elements. “You have to understand, we are an underground organization. We have spent years quietly penetrating positions of influence,” one member told journalist Russ Bellant, who documented the group’s resurgence in the United States in his 1988 book, “Old Nazis, New Right, and the Republican Party.”
Sounds about right...
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Saturday August 19 2017, @12:13AM
I am a crackpot